Men by hundreds and thousands thousands have been killed and wounded at Dien Bien Phu, that desolate and henceforth famous spot in Tonkin where there raged one of the most furious battles in a struggle which has been going on for eight consecutive years. Dien Bien Phu! Who knew of that name six months ago? But suddenly that little hamlet, that group of villages in the high Thai country, was promoted to glory! In the newspapers of the entire world Dien Bien Phu held the headlines, and whatever may be the outcome of this battle we know that Dien Bien Phu will remain in the memory of all as a high point in history. Like Thermopylae and Pearl Harbor, it may become a rallying cry—the rallying cry in the fight for freedom against world domination by the Communist dictators.
I shall not enter into a discussion as to whether the importance of the struggle is primarily political or primarily military in character. One thing seems certain: for those who still had doubts as to the nature of the issues at stake in Indochina, Dien Bien Phu has been a kind of revelation, following which ideas are crystallized and from which conclusions flow naturally and logically. It is no longer a matter of finding out why the war began or of discussing mutual responsibilities. Henceforth it is simply a matter of acknowledging a simple and brutal fact: the Communists wish at any cost to integrate Indochina into the bloc of peoples which they already dominate. This determination has no other limits than the strength of the will to resist which is opposed to it.
It is easy to understand why the Communists seek to establish their power over Indochina. Situated on the southern frontier of the Chinese land mass, the countries of Indochina constitute in fact the principal path of access towards Southeast Asia. This region of Asia, which extends from Burma and Tonkin in the north to Malaya and Indonesia in the south by way of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, stands with respect to China in a situation comparable to the Balkans with respect to Soviet Russia: Southeast Asia is the Balkans of Asia, an area which in addition to its strategic importance is endowed at the same time with the greatest natural wealth.
After the Second World War and following the Accords of Yalta and Potsdam, the Soviet Union, which could pretend, by reason of the part taken by its armies in the “liberation” of these countries, as well as the ethnic affinities which linked it to these peoples, to have a certain right to establish its influence in Balkan Europe, succeeded in installing Communist regimes in most of the states of this region and in integrating them solidly into its system. Its success, however, was less than complete, and today we observe, that wherever internal resistance, supported or not by forces from the outside, has been sufficiently violent, as in Greece and Yugoslavia, to oppose Moscow’s attempted domination, the Kremlin’s undertaking has failed. That is why today the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean and of the Adriatic and Aegean Seas are not the haunts of Soviet naval bases and that is why in case of conflict the Atlantic Powers have an excellent opportunity of retaining the mastery of the Mediterranean.
China has as many reasons for wishing to dominate Southeast Asia as the Soviet Union had for wishing to dominate the Balkans. Its security would thereby be considerably strengthened. Furthermore, the free world would thereby be deprived of raw materials which are necessary to its economy and to the internal equilibrium of its commercial exchange. Finally, the Communist forces in the remainder of Asia would derive such encouragement from this victory that doubtless Japan and India would in turn be gravely threatened.
Indochina is in the forefront of this struggle. From the moment of the arrival of the forces of Mao Tse Tung at the frontier of Tonkin in December, 1949, the Peking Government assumed the task of helping the Viet Minh to organize their forces. It has contributed to the political education of their cadres, to the organization of their administration, to the development of their agrarian reform, and, finally and above all, to the training, instruction, equipment, and supply of their armed forces. Today we see the results of this aid at Dien Bien Phu where the Franco-Vietnamese forces of the French Union opposed a modern and powerfully equipped army. Is it to be an effort if the stakes at issue did not justify it? It is clearly evident that the leaders in Peking, who remain essentially preoccupied with the internal consolidation of their regime, have assumed such a responsibility because they believe that their Communist Viet Minh comrades could eventually bring them substantial compensation. Mao Tse Tung would never have agreed to furnish Ho Chi Minh such important assistance if the results of this undertaking were to be limited to the territory of Vietnam alone, much less if only Tonkin were involved. For in itself Tonkin and even all of Vietnam have only a relative geopolitical value. By themselves they would not justify the international risks which China now incurs by aiding the Viet Minh. These risks are only comprehensible in a vaster perspective in which Ho Chi Minh and his companions constitute the vanguard of an army whose field of operations extends beyond the framework of Vietnam and in which the conquest of that country is only the first phase of an offensive with longer-range objectives.
Within the Indochinese peninsula the Viet Minh have received a mission which extends beyond the geographical frontiers of Vietnam. The invasion of Northern Laos, which on two successive occasions in the spring of 1953 and in January-February, 1954, was unsuccessfully attempted by the Viet Minh, their present efforts to reach the Mekong in Central and southern Laos, the penetration into Cambodia in recent weeks by regular Viet Minh battalions which seek to cut the country in two from the northeast to the southwest, the links which the Communists are reinforcing with the Vietnamese colonies established in Thailand on the opposite side of the Mekong—-all these developments indicate that the Viet Minh leaders have been chosen by their masters in Moscow and Peking to serve in the present phase as the leaders of the Communist revolution in this part of Asia.
The Viet Minh can no longer pretend that they represent a Vietnamese Nationalist movement whose sole objective is to give the country full and complete sovereignty and true independence. This argument might have seemed valid in 1945 and 1946, to such an extent that many elements of American opinion allowed themselves to be deluded for several years as to the true nature of the Viet Minh. Today every person of good faith must agree that this movement seeks to create in Indochina the first bloc of Democratic Popular Republics in Southeast Asia, as closely subordinated to China as the republics of Eastern Europe are to the Soviet Union. If this objective were attained, these republics would contribute assistance to Communist movements in the neighboring countries of Thailand, Burma, and Malaya, just as Bulgaria aided the Greek rebels of Markos, and, step by step, without the armed forces of China having to fire a single shot, Southeast Asia would soon become Communist. It is worth recalling that during the Second World War, when Japan had succeeded in establishing herself in Indochina and in setting up military bases there, she was thereafter easily able to make use of them as a spring-board for the conquest of all Southeast Asia. Towards the south, Thailand and then Malaya were rapidly submerged, Singapore fell immediately thereafter, Indonesia was in turn invaded, with the result that in a few weeks the Japanese armies were at the gates of Australia. At the same time the forces of the Empire of the Rising Sun proceeded westward across Burma and thus were able to threaten India.
In this enterprise China would furthermore have a considerable advantage: she could in fact use the presence of important Chinese colonies in many countries of Southeast Asia in order to foment trouble therein. She is already trying to win them by her propaganda and, to the extent that the chances which the “mother country” might have of dominating Asia appeared certain, these minorities would be likely to fall in behind the banner of Mao Tse Tung.
When I was French Ambassador in Japan from April, 1950, to July, 1953, I had an opportunity to follow the Korean War at close hand. Communist aggression manifested itself there openly with a brutality, a cynicism, and a contempt for the so-called doctrine of “pacific co-existence” so obvious that the reaction of the free world was unanimous. The United Nations condemned this unjust aggression and resisted it by the legitimate use of force. The Korean people rose in the struggle to defend their independence and, with the aid of the United Nations—and most particularly of the United States—they were able to create a powerful army.
In Indochina the Communists, in order to mask their long-range designs, take advantage of a set of circumstances which have allowed them to deceive many people for a long time and to give their enterprises of commination an appearance sufficiently confused to sow doubts even now as to their true intentions.
It is in this way that the Viet Minh pretend that they represent the authentic popular forces of Vietnam struggling only for the independence of the country against the continued presence on the national territory of foreign forces belonging to the former colonial power.
In France the Viet Minh’s principal ally, the Communist Party, playing on the word “resistance” which awakens noble echoes in the hearts of all Frenchmen who fought the Nazi invaders, leads a vicious propaganda campaign in their favor and glorifies to the masses the victorious “resistance” of the Viet Minh to the so-called reactionary activities of the French “colonialists” subsidized by American “imperialism.” In the same way many French intellectuals, believing mistakenly that France still seeks under cover of an anti-Communist crusade to retain former positions of imperial strength in Vietnam, consider it their duty to denounce a struggle which they pretend is contrary to the profound aspirations of the Vietnamese people. However, the great mass of the French people remain both by reason and by instinct hostile to the Viet Minh and the national conscience is henceforth aware that the Indochina war is not a “dirty war” but a war in which sons of France are dying every day for a just cause.
Furthermore the Viet Minh have succeeded, for related reasons, in attracting the sympathy of appreciable fractions of public opinion in many Asiatic countries. The latter identify the struggle which they have waged in the course of the last fifteen or twenty years to free themselves from the colonial control of the Western Powers with the so- called war of liberation carried on by the Viet Minh. Even when they understand that nationalism in such cases is nothing more than a vehicle for Communism, certain Asiatics still believe that the principal danger remains an offensive return of the Western presence, or, in a more general way, of the white presence, and that the Communist threat is therefore secondary. Still obsessed by the exigencies of the anti-colonialist struggle, they are unsuccessful in making the intellectual revolution which would enable them to make an energetic defense of an independence dearly bought against the future masters of Peking. Yellow solidarity is often stronger than the solidarity of free peoples. That is why, with the exception of South Korea, Japan, and Thailand, all of whom are determined to resist the expansion of Communism, the Governments of the Asiatic countries have not yet recognized the Associated States of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, whereas 35 nations, primarily European and American, have recognized them at the present time. However, an evolution is taking place for two reasons, it seems: in the first place, the more and more pronounced character of the subordination of the Viet Minh to the Governments of Moscow and Peking appears detrimental to the interests of Ho Chi Minh with respect to Asiatic nationalist parties. The latter are disturbed to observe that the freedom of action of the old Tonkinese leader is more and more restricted and that he is obliged slavishly to adapt his tactics to the wider demands of Sino-Soviet strategy. Thus the example of Ho Chi Minh frightens many Asiatic leaders in so far as it destroys the illusion of an Asia primarily nationalist but also neutralist.
Furthermore, the increasingly complete independence enjoyed juridically and concretely by the Associated States strips the Viet Minh of their main argument in the eyes of Asiatic opinion. In fact, if it is henceforth proved that France is sincerely in favor of the realization of the nationalist aspirations of the peoples of Indochina, with less cost to the future independence of the three States than if they were to fall under the power of Ho Chi Minh and his henchmen, there is thereafter no further reason to refuse their leaders the respect which they deserve or to question their right to be the legitimate representative of the peoples of Indochina.
That is why it is to be hoped that in the relatively near future certain Asiatic Governments will decide to revise their previous attitude and to recognize the Governments of the States of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
But it is above all and very evidently among the Vietnamese masses that the Viet Minh have been seeking for nine years to establish a position of prestige. It is undeniable that they have succeeded in this to a considerable degree. I shall not undertake to explain the reasons for this success which, moreover, are easy to understand. The important thing is to note that if certain conditions were shortly to be met, the hold of the Viet Minh might be considerably lessened.
It is appropriate first of all to recall that, although the Vietnamese people as a whole possess considerable unity of language, traditions, and customs, nevertheless unquestionable differences still separate north from south, Tonkin from Cochinchina, while Annam, which forms the central part of the country, likewise possesses a marked regionalism.
The men of the Viet Minh are for the most part natives of the north, where political struggles have always been more vigorous than in the south and where the proximity of Chinese power has awakened, in accordance with the ups and downs of history, a livelier spirit of independence and resistance to foreign domination than in the remainder of the country. In the overpopulated delta, where agrarian reform has always been one of the principal demands of the peasant masses, Viet Minh slogans would inevitably attract and appeal to a population which thought it saw in Ho Chi Minh the spokesman for its national and social aspirations. Profiting by Communist lessons and methods, Ho Chi Minh was able to organize his party to a remarkable degree, to adapt it to local conditions, to form political cadres and, after having eliminated the other nationalist parties which did not profit from the same experience, he was able to present himself at a given moment as the sole de facto Vietnamese authority dominating Tonkin. His propaganda teams traveled incessantly through the country. He was soon able to organize armed groups, and when in 1950 the armies of Mao Tse Tung reached the Sino-Vietnamese frontier, he had every facility in making arrangements for his military cadres to undergo serious training in China, whence he began likewise to receive substantial and ever increasing material aid. Thenceforth the activity of the Viet Minh no longer presented a purely political problem, itself already difficult enough to solve; to it was added a military problem the gravity of which has steadily increased during the last four years. Having won military successes the Viet Minh were able to organize a semblance of administration in the zones which they controlled by force, to raise recruits, to levy taxes, and to enhance their prestige. At the same time they were able to mount guerrilla operations led by their partisans in Annam and Cochinchina, thus forcing the French High Command to maintain important effectives in these areas. These forces have been insufficient to pacify them completely.
However, the popularity of the Viet Minh threatens to decline to the extent that, in order to maintain and increase their war effort, they are obliged to impose heavier and heavier burdens on the population— levies on the harvest, forced labor, intensive recruitment of soldiers and coolies, etc.
In fact, the Viet Minh have never succeeded in fanaticizing the population but only in dominating it. It is certainly true that devotion in the case of some and fear on the part of the majority still enable the Viet Minh successfully to carry out their military operations with the voluntary or tacit consent of an important segment of the masses, particularly in Tonkin. Nevertheless, signs of lassitude are apparent, and it is probable that with the passage of time, and if the Viet Minh were not to win spectacular successes, they would little by little find less complaisance than in the past on the part of the population, who might well reach the point of rendering the Viet Minh responsible for the sufferings of the war. In spite of their skill in masking their true colors, in spite of their appeals to fraternization, and in spite of the widespread lassitude of the masses, the Viet Minh—and that is perhaps the most important phenomenon—have not succeeded in rallying the entire country behind them. In the words of a picturesque expression, the Franco-Vietnamese forces are not like specks in the soup, or to use another expression dear to Communist propaganda, the “Popular Army” of the Viet Minh does not live in the midst of the population like a fish in water. In spite of furious efforts to infiltrate the country, the Communists have never succeeded in transforming their movement into a true national revolution. Indeed, if as I indicated above, the masses in certain regions still allow themselves to be dominated too easily, increasing disaffection with regard to the Viet Minh regime is noted on the part of many representatives of that intellectual class which, at the outset of the “nationalist” experience, had thought it possible to give it their support. The more the Viet Minh unmask themselves and proclaim their allegiance to international Communism, the more strongly the forces of anti-Communist resistance manifest themselves in the interior of the country.
The credit for this seems to me to belong primarily to His Majesty Bao Dai. In contrast to Ho Chi Minh—“Uncle Ho”—the Chief of State of Vietnam represents the single pole of attraction for all those united by the intense desire not to allow themselves to be overwhelmed by the Communist tidal wave. Endowed with remarkable intelligence and profoundly attached to his country, the descendant of the Nguyen dynasty has succeeded little by little, and under very difficult circumstances, in imposing his authority on the Vietnamese nationalist leaders, both political and religious, and in channeling their energies.
Certain people, in Vietnam as in France and abroad, have occasionally shown impatience because His Majesty Bao Dai has not taken more initiative in order to commit his country more decisively to the war effort called for by the threat from the North. It is true that much time has been lost, that must be admitted; but it is likewise true that every war effort has a chance of producing fruitful results only in so far as it is inspired by motives powerful enough to convince those on whose behalf it requires the accomplishment of a national duty. Although these motives existed in fact virtually from the outset, it is nonetheless true that they have only recently become clearly evident. As a matter of fact the desire for total independence among the Vietnamese became greater with the passage of time. The war, which appeared at the outset to most of them as a police operation waged by French forces in order to return to the French Empire a colony lost as a result of t he upheavals of the Second World War, assumed an entirely different meaning on the day when it became evident that, even in taking up his position alongside that of France, a Vietnamese would not be betraying the ideal of independence which he carries in his heart. It is true that many have questioned French sincerity. Were the agreements of the Baie d’Along in 1948, the Treaty of March 8, 1949, the Paul Agreements of December 31, 1949, really designed to grant to Vietnam the independence so long desired and to restore to it its lost sovereignty? At the same time as the wave of western domination receded from so many other Asiatic countries, at the same time as India, Pakistan, Ceylon, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Burma were conquering by force of arms or by the virtues of persuasion the right to be sovereign and independent countries, was Vietnam to remain, in spite of all the promises which had been solemnly made to it, in a state of semi-independence and semi-tutelage, and this by reason of the military operations which were taking place on its territory? In Laos and Cambodia, where the situation at the time was much less complicated, patriots followed the same line of reasoning and anxiously questioned France. Is the French Union, they asked, nothing more than the new name hypocritically given to the former French Empire?
It is true that these patriots sometimes forgot the burdens imposed by true independence, in the foremost rank of which figures the duty to defend it against every external or internal threat. For many Vietnamese independence meant the magical return of peace. But those who saw things more clearly knew that in the dramatic conditions prevailing in Vietnam it was not enough just to demand independence at the risk of forgetting the Viet Minh danger. It was necessary likewise to forge arms with which to preserve it.
By creating a Vietnamese National Army in 1951 under the auspices of His Majesty Bao Dai and thanks to the energetic stimulus of Marshal de Lattre de Tassigny, France gave striking and definitive proof of her sincerity. More than all treaties, more than all promises, this commitment symbolized French determination to give Vietnam the attributes of sovereignty and to make of it a strong and independent State.
But France desires to go still further. By the declaration of July 3, 1953, the French Government solemnly proclaimed its intention of transferring to the Governments of the Associated States the last vestiges of authority which it retained in Indochina by reason of the war. It invited its associates to enter into negotiations with it for this purpose.
At the present time these negotiations have already resulted in important accomplishments.
As far as Laos is concerned, all authority has been transferred to the Royal Government. Furthermore, a Treaty of Friendship and Association with attached diplomatic, military, judicial, economic, and financial conventions was signed in Paris on October 22, 1953. With Cambodia, France has signed since last August a certain number of agreements which have resulted in the transfer to the Royal Government of all effective authority, particularly in judicial, military, and police matters. It is thus that His Majesty the King of Cambodia exercises direct command of the Royal Khmer Army. Furthermore, with the exception of certain services, such as the Exchange Office, which are quadripartite in character in accordance with the Pau Agreements and whose transfer requires negotiations with the other States, the Cambodian Government exercises in practice its full authority over all administrative services. Finally, negotiations are to open in the very near future in Paris with a view to defining the nature of the future association between France and Cambodia.
With respect to the negotiations with Vietnam, they began only on March 8 last, in spite of the very real desire of the French Government to see them initiated immediately after the declaration of July 3. As I write these lines they are not yet concluded, but they have taken a clearly favorable turn and it seems that they will be completed in the very near future. In so far as their political aspects are concerned, the conversations have centered primarily on the question of the nature of the French Union. I shall not undertake here to analyze in detail this important question, which is more important than is often imagined by some of our American friends who forget that the French Union also includes the African overseas territories.
However, I should like to recall that the Constitution of 1946, although containing in its preamble a liberal definition of the French Union conceived as a community of peoples free and equal in rights and duties, entrusts the Government of the French Republic in Title 8 with a directing and coordinating role. With respect to the French Union as a whole, this concept was doubtless justified in 1946, at a period when no independent sovereign State existed within the French Union other than the French Republic. But from the moment when France, within the framework of its policy of emancipation of the peoples formerly submitting to colonial tutelage and in full harmony with the evolution of the nationalist phenomenon in Asia, decided to grant independence to the States of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, it became desirable to establish the basis of the association between France and these three States on the double concept of perfect equality and reciprocity of rights and obligations. It was in this spirit that the President of the French Republic and His Majesty the King of Laos signed the Treaty of October 22. In the same way the Franco-Vietnamese negotiations currently taking place are governed by this pre-eminent consideration. It is to be hoped that France and Cambodia will likewise shortly be able to reach agreement in this sense.
Thus, at the moment when negotiations of crucial importance are taking place in Geneva, the Governments of Vietnam and the other Associated States will be able to appear before world opinion as the legitimate Governments of sovereign and independent States, facing, in the case of the first, an internal rebellion aided by Communist China, and, in the case of the other two, a foreign invasion.
French policy in Indochina thus seeks to create the psychological conditions necessary for the full development of local nationalism. Once these conditions exist France is perfectly justified in expecting the States of Indochina to employ all the moral and material means at their disposal to present a victorious resistance to the activities of the Viet Minh and to create in their turn the conditions necessary for a satisfactory settlement of the conflict.
I shall not risk anticipating events. However skeptical one may be with regard to the chances which the free world has, in the light of experiences since the Second World War, of concluding a true negotiated peace with the Communist Powers, no effort should be spared to obtain such a result.
I shall merely point out that in my view an acceptable settlement must meet at least the three following conditions: (1) the preservation of the integrity and independence of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam and the guarantee to their peoples of public and individual liberties; (2) the maintenance between each of these three countries and France of the bonds created by common interest and sacrifices jointly made, which must be defined by the new treaties; and (3) the assurance to the free world that Communist forces will not derive from this settlement advantages of a political or military character which would imply their seizure in short order of all of Indochina and, beyond that, of Southeast Asia.
The chances of reaching such an agreement exist, and it is the most fervent wish of the French people, who have lost tens of thousands of soldiers and officers in Indochina, to see them fulfilled.
If France put so much hope in the Geneva Conference, it was because at the moment of undertaking the settlement of a' war which for nine years had weighed so heavily on the moral and material resources of the nation she knew that the significance of the struggle which she had pursued alone was finally fully understood by the free world. It is true that responsibility for the final settlement must fall primarily upon France, but henceforth she has the opportunity, in bringing her adversaries to peace, of counting solidly on her Allies. At the Berlin Conference the three Western Powers presented a united front to Mr. Molotov’s attempts at disassociation, and it was noteworthy that France, in spite of the great lassitude which she feels and her wish for peace, was resolved to yield nothing which might compromise the confidence which her Western Allies and her Indochinese associates have in her. It is with their full agreement, and not by bilateral negotiations with the Viet Minh, that France hopes to put an end to the conflict under conditions which take into due consideration the interests of the Associated States, of France, and of the free world.
Confident in France and in the States of Indochina, their Allies have provided during recent months unsparing and tangible proofs of their solidarity. I do not doubt that the tenacity of the resistance of the Franco- Vietnamese forces at Dien Bien Phu will still further strengthen this effective sympathy. One should also recall the magnificent struggle of the Laotian people who, on two occasions, united behind their King and supported by the forces of the French Union, succeeded in repelling foreign invasion. Cambodia will likewise be called upon to display its spirit of resistance. With respect to Vietnam, whose sacrifices continue to mount grievously, its Government has just decided upon the constitution of a War Cabinet and the mobilization of four new classes, thus foreshadowing an important increase in the National Army, which has already reached 240,000 men, without counting the suppletive forces.
In the presence of this evidence of faith in final victory, the Western world, while measuring the dangers and the risks of the present situation, has taken fresh hope. The United States of America has increased its material aid in remarkable proportions during recent months. Bearing almost three- fourths of the financial cost of the war, the American Government has just given evidence, by the massive dispatch of aerial reinforcements and various war materials, as well as by the loan of aviation technicians, of its determination to do everything in its power in these fields to contribute to the success of the anti-Communist forces.
Other nations, like Australia, have likewise given tangible proof of their moral support.
This solidarity has an immensely stimulating effect on those fighting in Indochina. They know that their struggle is henceforth included in the general effort of resistance of the free world to the communist forces of domination. They know that they are no longer alone and that they are sustained by nations for whom collective security is not an empty word. They know that their sacrifice is no longer misunderstood and that after years of silence justice is done them. Finally, they know that wherever Communism meets a will to resist equal to its will to subvert, freedom has every chance of triumphing.
A career diplomat, M. Dejean has filled important posts in the foreign service of his country during the past twenty-five years. In the 1930’s he was a member of the staff of the French Ambassador in Berlin, and during World War II he held a number of important posts in the Free French government. A delegate at the San Francisco Conference, 1945, he has also represented France in the General Assembly of the United Nations. Before assignment to his present post in Indochina, he was French Ambassador to Japan.